Chile

Playground harmony

A political deal to improve schools

THE Escuela República Árabe Siria in Valparaíso, named for the early support it received from Syrian immigrants, has a better view than the Grange School in Santiago. But that is its only advantage. Perched above a hill-encircled Pacific bay, the school serves one of the most depressed areas of a declining port city. Stray dogs wander across the dusty playground, the paint is peeling, windows lack panes and the printers attached to the donated computers lack ink. By contrast, the Grange, one of Chile's top private schools, has modern laboratories and manicured playing fields. Unsurprisingly, in a 2006 national test fourth-year primary pupils from the Valparaíso school scored on average 50% less than their peers at the Grange.

This inequality between schools is the Achilles heel of Chile's education system. In the latest Programme for International Student Assessment, released this month by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Chile did better than other Latin American countries (see chart), though it ranked only 40th out of the 57 (mainly developed) countries that took part.

But the OECD found that in Chile the gap between the performances of different schools was one of the widest in the region and that this was more closely correlated to pupils' socio-economic background than was the case anywhere else. This inequality of outcomes among schools is a big reason why Chile's income distribution remains very unequal—even by Latin American standards and even after almost two decades of democratic government.

Money is one important issue. Fees at the Grange, at around $670 per month, are cheap by regional standards. But they are roughly ten times the grant per pupil that the municipality of Valparaíso receives from the education ministry for running the Escuela Árabe Siria. A bill close to being approved in Congress would raise this grant by 15% and by a further 50% for very poor schools.

After four months of talks, the government of Michelle Bachelet and the opposition have also reached agreement on a broader reform of education. This follows huge demonstrations by schoolchildren last year against the poor quality of state schooling. The protests seem to have shamed the politicians into setting aside an ideological tug-of-war between those wanting more state control and those in favour of letting the market and parental choice do their work.

This battle dates from the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (1973-90), which established the quasi-voucher system under which municipal and privately-run schools compete for state grants and pupils. “For the first time, we've agreed to just get on with improving standards instead of arguing about the system's structure,” says an official.

If approved by Congress, a new superintendency of education will supervise the use of state grants by both municipal and private schools, while a “quality agency” will monitor teaching standards and pupil attainment. Failing schools will face closure. The superintendency should shine light on how local governments spend their education grants, and whether these reach the poorest schools. To try and reduce social segregation, privately-run state-funded schools will not be able to select pupils by ability until they are aged 11. (This will not apply to private schools like the Grange that receive no state money.)

The reform does not deal with several important issues. One is that some municipal governments are clearly not up to the job of running schools in poorer areas. One idea is to group the education departments of weaker municipalities.

Yasna Provoste, the education minister, calls the agreement “historic”. Whether that turns out to be more than a cliché depends on the reform's implementation. But it might just mark the moment when Chile starts to tackle one of the main obstacles to its becoming a developed country—and a fairer one.